Salt & Stone

  I gaze upward. “What about it?” No sooner do I say this than I spot something I hadn’t before. A long, thin rope is looped around the top of the pole, attaching the flag in place. The rope is tan and easily blends in with the flagstaff, but I’m positive there wasn’t a rope on the other three we’ve discovered. “Guy, there’s a rope up there.”

  As soon as he spies what I’m referencing, his posture changes. In an instant, he withdraws into his head, carefully calculating what it could mean, if anything.

  Harper pulls the pack off her back and unzips it. “We should take it with us.”

  “Can your Pandora get to it?” I ask.

  In response, Harper places her two pointer fingers into her mouth and whistles. RX-13 swoops down from the cloudless sky and lands on top of the pole, cocking her eagle head at her Contender. “RX-13,” Harper says. “I need you to get that rope from the staff.”

  “It may be nothing,” Guy mutters.

  “You may be right,” I agree. “But we should take it anyway.”

  He steps back as if giving the eagle room to work. It’s not needed, though, because it takes only two swipes from RX-13’s back hallux talon to remove the flag. She reaches her beak down and takes the rope into it.

  I clap once, satisfied that the task is done. But as the eagle flies into the air, and the tail end of the rope jerks away from the pole, I hear a faint snapping noise.

  It sounds like a trigger being released.

  “What was that?” I ask when I hear a soft cracking sound. Guy turns toward me, a question in his gaze.

  “Yeah,” Harper says. “I hear it, too.”

  Everyone stops.

  When the second crackling, crunching sound emanates from above us, the features in Guy’s face turn from confusion to alarm.

  The world pulls in a long, beautiful breath.

  Holds it.

  And then an explosion rocks the ground beneath our feet. It’s so loud that it almost seems like the absence of sound. Like every last creature that calls this mountain home vanished in a heartbeat and left only hollowness.

  Then the sound is everywhere, eating me up, rattling my skull, grinding my bones.

  A tidal wave of snow falls toward us. We can’t outrun it. It’s not possible. But the others, they try anyway. Guy is yelling something. Run to the side, he must be saying. He’s pointing in that direction anyway, fear stretched across a face that knows no fear.

  I’m not sure why I don’t run. I’m not sure why I’m frozen in place. There go my Pandoras. There go my friends. There goes the guy who holds my heart. I should have told him how I felt. Why did I feel like he had to say it first?

  I’m running now.

  I don’t know how I found my legs, but there they are. I scream as I trudge through the snow, the weight distributors on my boots breaking away.

  No one turns and glances over their shoulder. There isn’t time. Like a sloth trying to outrun the rain, we keep moving. Keep hoping for a miracle. I’m at the very back. I stopped and watched the thing that will kill us all, and now I’ll be the first to be swallowed.

  Racing sideways across the mountain, I realize something. We’ll all get buried, but the others will get slammed by the edge of the avalanche. There may not be enough snow to bury them indefinitely. With enough effort, they could crawl out. But me? That’s not how I’m going.

  So with a sob breaking in my chest, I stop. I turn back to the avalanche again and face it like a warrior. When it kills me, when it squeezes the last breath from my lungs, I want it to believe I wasn’t afraid. If the people running this race are watching — somehow, somewhere — I want them to see my face.

  I’ve only stopped in place for a second when a body slams into mine. He shoves me forward so that I’m stumbling down the mountain toward the cabin. Before I can regain my balance, he shoves me again and again so that I’m rolling end over end.

  Sky.

  Snow.

  Cabin.

  Sky.

  Snow.

  Cabin.

  Sky —

  Strong arms lift me up, and I hear the crack of a door being kicked in. I tumble inside a cabin that stands directly in the avalanche’s path. I have only a moment to savor this last second of life before snow buries us beneath its greedy, ravenous belly.

  With my legs shaking, my body broken and bruised, I turn and face the person who granted me an extra moment of life.

  My eyes land on Cotton.

  The avalanche rushes toward the cabin. It sounds like a 747 crashing into the mountainside. The force of the oncoming tidal wave causes the floor to shake beneath my feet. Cotton flies across the room and dives on top of my body like he’s a defensive all-star and I’m a running back three yards from the end zone.

  I groan from the weight of him, but in truth I’m glad he’s here. If I’m to die, at least I won’t be alone. Then a thought occurs to me a second before the snow delivers its final punch.

  I shouldn’t be happy he’s here. It only means two will die instead of one.

  The avalanche slams into the cabin.

  The two of us are thrown like tiny, plastic chess pieces across the floor, tumbling into the far wall. The entire cabin shakes and groans as if it’s a living, breathing thing saying good-bye to this bittersweet life. One side of the cabin collapses. The ceiling crashes to the floor as if it was never meant to be there to begin with. Snow rushes in, and we scramble across the ground to the opposite end of the cabin.

  I’m being buried alive. I’m a miner under a mile of collapsed bedrock, a body being lowered six feet beneath freshly turned soil. I can’t breathe. I can’t hear. I can’t feel anything besides Cotton’s short nails digging into my forearm.

  The entire cabin lifts from its shoddy foundation, and I scream.

  Cotton squeezes his arms around my body and palms my head against his chest.

  And then, at once, the cabin slams back into place. The walls give one last mournful wail. The rushing sound moves away from us, and even though my ears still ring from the noise, I can tell the worst has passed. The worst has passed, and I’m alive.

  I’m alive!

  I want to celebrate, but I’m too terrified to move. We could be ten feet under snow. Twenty. The smallest motion could cause the remainder of the ceiling to fall. Shaking, I crane my neck toward Cotton. His head is between his knees. Slowly, he straightens until we’re eye to eye.

  “It’s over,” he says.

  I can’t find my voice. I can’t fathom what happened and how my heart is still beating.

  He glances at the ceiling. He’s thinking the same thing I am. That this could still end badly. We could be trapped down here. We could be crushed. We could freeze to death without Oz.

  “There can’t be that much above us.” Cotton gets to his feet, and I notice he’s shaking, too. It makes it worse that he’s scared, because I’ve always thought of him as I have Guy. The two have always seemed incapable of experiencing true fear. But when I remember the look on Guy’s face after the explosion sounded, I know that’s not true.

  “Ma-maybe we shouldn’t … move,” I force out.

  Cotton is already inspecting the ceiling, laying his hand against the three walls he can reach, analyzing the snow that covers a third of the space. “We’ll have to eventually. Why not now?”

  Watching him work, I feel as if he’s decided that it wouldn’t be so bad to die. I don’t understand it one bit, but he does have a point. We have to find a way out. There’s no telling how long we have until the ceiling comes down.

  I climb to my feet but nearly collapse when my ankle rolls. Cotton makes a movement as if he’s going to help me right myself but then stops. Darkness crosses his face, and he turns away. I don’t dwell on what I saw in his features. Instead, I propose a plan.

  “We could pull the snow into the cabin. Maybe if we do it little by little, it will open a hole above us.”

  Cotton considers this. “But if it doesn’t, we’ll get colder fast
er and run out of air even quicker.”

  The thought is enough to send a tremor through me once again. After all this, I could still go down suffocating at the bottom of an avalanche. “We could wait. Maybe the others saw where we went. They’ll come to dig us out.”

  Cotton continues studying the snow and sighs. He doesn’t believe the others made it out alive. I hate him for this, even if he did save my life. Guy’s face flashes in my mind, but I push it away. I can’t hold a memorial for him already. He’s alive. He has to be. Guy Chambers is invincible. And the other Contenders? My Pandoras and theirs? They have to be okay, too.

  Madox, are you out there? I’m here. I’m in the cabin. I need you.

  “We have two choices. We can try and dig our way out now, or we can wait to see if the snow begins to melt.” Cotton points to the snow that oozes into the cabin. “If it starts to melt or more slides in, that’ll be a good sign, I think.”

  “How do you know?” I ask.

  He rubs the back of his neck. “I don’t.”

  My pulse still beats inside my ears as if my heart is trying to climb out of my body, but I’ve at least calmed down enough to think. As I do, a new, disquieting question dawns. Cotton inspects the cabin — taking in the tight space, the lack of windows or alternative doors, the logs laid one on top of the other as a true pioneer cabin might have — and I inspect him. His dark hair falls to his shoulders, tousled as a surfer’s, and his insulated navy jacket and pants do little to hide his thickly muscled build. Fine lines crease his face, and though he’s probably seven or eight years older than I am, the lines seem born more from stress than age.

  Cotton pushes the snow toward the far wall so that there’s more room for us to move around. As he works, my eyes never stray from his strong body. He’s built like an engine. Or perhaps a weapon. I should help him work. I should do something. But I can’t. Because every second that passes is another second my mind wraps itself around one single question I desperately want to ask.

  Finally, after I can’t stand to remain silent on the subject any longer, I open my mouth to speak.

  “Cotton,” I say in a whisper, “why did you save me?”

  He stops working. He stands.

  When he turns and faces me — his full lips pressed into a thin line, his brown eyes burning with some deeply suppressed emotion — I know I shouldn’t have asked.

  I shouldn’t have asked, but I did, and I can’t take it back.

  Cotton moves toward me like a hunter.

  Cotton continues advancing toward me, and I back up until I can back up no longer, my question hanging in the air.

  “I may not have saved you.” His voice is low and soothing. He speaks as if I’m a startled fawn that may bolt, but there’s nowhere to go. There is only him. “Why do you look so afraid?”

  “We’re buried under snow,” I explain. “The ceiling could collapse.”

  He rubs his jaw. “That’s not the only reason, now is it?”

  “I don’t know what you mean.”

  He laughs. The sound wriggles inside of me like a worm in sodden earth. Cotton taps his temple and leans his face in close. “You’re a smart one, Tella.” Though he’s acting aggressive, it isn’t quite convincing. It’s like someone’s told him to take me out, and he isn’t sure he can finish the job.

  I step past him like I’ve remembered something important. “We have to get out of here, Cotton. Here, I’ll help you move the snow. Give us room to think.”

  Cotton grabs my arm and slams me into place. When my back hits the wall, the ceiling groans. I flinch, both from the threat of being crushed and from the grip Cotton maintains on my bicep.

  “Tell me why you look afraid,” Cotton says.

  “I told you.”

  Cotton touches his chest. “I like to think I’m a guy people can be honest with. So, please, humor me.”

  “Have you been honest?” I ask, no longer able to hide my suspicion. I’ve survived innumerable near-death encounters, and now I’m going to cower before a Contender in the last few minutes of my life? No.

  I step toward him until our chests brush. He falls back a fraction.

  “Did you really hit your head?” I ask. “Did you really forget the first two legs of the Brimstone Bleed? Did your Pandora really toss Braun’s Pandora overboard on accident? Did you really sleep next to Harper only to keep her warm?”

  I eye his dark hair and remember the black ink I saw running down his neck aboard the ship. Then I look at his scalp, and when I do, my heart clenches so hard, I’m sure it’ll rupture. There’s a difference between questioning the things someone has said and wondering if there’s more to them than meets the eye, and actually having the truth slap you in the face.

  Cotton says he’s been in the race for two and a half months. Enough time to cover the jungle, desert, and ocean, and arrive safely at base camp. But then why, when I inspect his dyed black hair, don’t I see blond roots that reflect that same story? It’s something I’ve thought before but never really dwelled on.

  I swallow, clench my fists, and prepare for a fight if need be. “When did you dye your hair, Cotton?”

  His brow furrows at this sudden change in questioning.

  “Did you do it before you left for the race?” I ask. He pushes toward me again, but I stop him with a hand to his chest. “And if you did, why does your hair look in every way like a dye job done four weeks ago?”

  He shoves himself toward me, and I throw both hands into his chest and push with everything I have.

  “No!” I scream, no longer caring about the fragile ceiling. “Who are you? Why are you here?!”

  Cotton snatches my wrists and shoves them to my sides as easily as if I were a bothersome moth. Then he grabs the back of my neck and jerks my face forward. His lips touch my ear, and the hair on my arms rises.

  “You want to know who I am, Contender? You want me to tell you my secret? Okay, here goes. Six weeks ago, you stood on a cliff and watched as a Contender fell to his death.” He pulls his face back so that our eyes meet. “That Contender? His name was Titus Hoffman. And he was my brother.”

  He releases me, and I charge past him. I stumble and fall in the snow, wetness coating my left side. I scramble backward on it, trying in vain to put distance between me and Cotton. He is Titus’s brother. The sociopath who drowned one of his own guys in quicksand, who forced his tongue inside my mouth, who tried to kill me when I wouldn’t become his partner — that guy shares DNA with Cotton.

  Cotton scratches his head. “We don’t look that much alike, not really, but I figured I should dye my hair anyway. I think the people running this race loved that. Thought it would make for a good curveball. You know, it was them who suggested I could be a good Contender in Titus’s place. ’Course I didn’t really know what they were talking about until I accepted.”

  “I didn’t want to kill him,” I whisper.

  Cotton cocks his head. “Oh, I’m sure you didn’t. I’m sure you felt awful about shoving my little brother to his death.”

  I fight to stop my hands from shaking. “You’re not like him. He did bad things in this race, Cotton.”

  His face softens. He wants to keep this aggressive front up, but I can also tell he’s curious about how his brother fared in his final weeks. “He did what he had to do to save our father.”

  I shake my head. “No. No, Titus did far more than that. He abused his Pandora. He created a team of guys called the Triggers, and they bullied other Contenders for amusement. He drowned a Contender in quicksand just because that Contender touched me. He kidnapped me, Cotton. He took me away from my friends and he tried to make me —”

  “Stop.”

  Slowly, I climb to my feet. “The Contenders, they become different inside this place. Some of us turn into animals, and it’s understandable.”

  “And you?” Cotton sneers. “Did you turn into an animal?”

  I turn my face away. “I don’t pretend to be any better than the rest. We’ve
all made mistakes here, and I’m no different.”

  His arms tighten at his sides, and he drops his head. “You know what I don’t understand? How you can be this girl who wants to protect everyone — the Pandoras and the Contenders, too — and be the same person who took him away.”

  Even though Cotton’s eyes are lowered, I spot the torment in them. On one hand, he wants revenge for his brother’s death, but on the other, I’m not the monster he expected me to be. “You don’t have to do what they expect you to do,” I venture. “You can be different. You can help us take this race down forever. I know you miss your brother, but —”

  His gaze flicks up, ablaze with fury.

  I pull in a deep breath and continue. “I know you care for Harper, too. I see the way you look at her. She’s lost someone, too. You could be the one to help her.”

  Cotton storms across the room. I fall back on the snow, and he drops on top of me. His hands wrap around my throat, and he squeezes. “You killed him!” he growls. “You act like a saint while everyone’s looking, but up on that cliff you were a murderer. No matter what you say my brother did, at least he wasn’t two-faced. But you? You’re the one with secrets. You’re the one who will kill us in the end!”

  His fingers tighten, cutting off my air. I rip at his hands and tear at his face. Adrenaline floods my nervous system until I feel as if I’ll explode like the mountain did. “I didn’t … push him.”

  Cotton roars with frustration and anger. “Yes, you did! They saw you. Two people fighting, one falling. It was you!”

  Stars dance in my peripheral vision, and warmth seeps into my skin. But that can’t be right, because I’m lying in snow. “His Pandora pushed him,” I choke out. “AK-7 was his Pandora. He … shoved him off.”

  Cotton’s hold lessens. “You’re lying.”

  I do my best to shake my head, but I can hardly move my neck. “The bear was his. Titus told me to kill him, and I wouldn’t.”

  He falls back, and I roll to my side, coughing and gasping for air. It’s a long time before I’m able to sit up, and even when I do, I can hardly swallow. Pain shoots daggers through my neck, and I can almost sense where each of his fingers dug into my flesh.